Iam Ananda Kammampati (username "blogananda" at DSL forums) and I would like to introduce StudentOS™ - a remastered DSL4.0 but, with Linux 2.4.35 kernel built with LIRC module.

Now why does the world need yet another remastered Linux you might ask. Fair question and I dont have a convincing answer :-) But I have shared my thoughts on creation of StudentOS™ and different "Editions" of it on my website.

I then went ahead and did something that the creators of DSL and it's community would hate to see someone doing it for DSL. which is "bloating" the distro and going against it's phylosophy of keeping it small.

So, before I get flame emails :-) just wanted clarify that my intial plan is to work extensively on DSL-N (2.6 kernel). But since I couldn't get the development tools working on DSL-N (atleast when I looked into it last time), I eventually ended up spending more time on DSL, creating StudentOS™ and different Editions based on it, with each bundled with a different set of Opensource applications.

For now, please bear with the ugly (but harmless) error messages that will be thrown at bootup time (exception - StudentOS™-Basic Edition). I'll take care of them in theirnext cut/release.The error messages will appear only when it is booted from CDROM. Once you install them on the hardrive (Press F3 at boot prompt and enter "install"), things should be fine.

Clicking on each Edition of StudentOS™ listed under www.metoolabs.com-->Documentation-->StudentOS-->Editions

should popup a browser (or a tab in your browser) showing step-by-step instructions in building all the softwares listed under that particular Edition.

I sincerely hope the documentations that I have provided will save a lot of trouble for anyone out there who love DSL and who would like to install different Opensource software on DSL. (The website is slow and it might be annoying. But I'll fix it)

I welcome you to sign-in the guestbook with your thoughts and suggestions :-) You can also reach me at :

No, not spam. Quite useful actually. I didn't think some of that software would work on dsl (Wordpress, for example). And a bunch of wiki's I been meaning to try anyway.

How they have it fully documented is great as well. Every package or source install is fully documented and commented. The base remaster (and kernel compiling) documentation is years ahead of the ReMaster thread on here, if not simple easier on the eyes.

I'm already downloading three of the distros to see if any of the wiki's are worth while for my own remaster.

I have absolutely no intensions of spamming our forum. I love DSL as much as you do. The reason I posted in two places is obviously to get the word out so that people dont have to spend time on trying to figure out how to build softwares from source bundles and/or how to configure them on DSL.

I sincerely believe that the docs. that I have posted will only accelerate the adoption of DSL even further!

I work on virtualization and emdedded space and I truely believe DSL could play a major role in those areas as well. (more to follow). There is absolutely nothing out there in my website that is proprietary. And that's precisely why I picked only the GPL'ed softwares to be part of my Editions.

With respect to trademark, I honestly don't believe there is anything wrong in it. "Linux" is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds as you know and no one is against him for that matter.

Well, that's just my opinion. We could still have differences but I believe we can still help out each other with DSL going forward :-)